


A Swashbuckler's Tale

by Lion_owl



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Action/Adventure, Ambiguous/Open Ending, For an exchange, Friendship, Gen, Holodecks/Holosuites, The Three Musketeers - Freeform, o'brien is athos and bashir is d'artagnan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 08:11:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11551113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lion_owl/pseuds/Lion_owl
Summary: Julian and Miles step into a world of adventure and political intrigue when Miles' new holoprogramme takes them to the court of Louis XIII of France, where a war against Spain is on the horizon





	A Swashbuckler's Tale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwoMenAndAGuava (drakkynfyre47)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drakkynfyre47/gifts).



> my contribution to the cosmic_llin's star trek friendshipfest, 2017

“Hey, Julian!” Miles called, catching up to his friend just as he was leaving the infirmary. “You got a minute?”

“A minute, but I was just heading home for a long, hot shower.”

“Oh,” Miles face dropped. “I was hoping you’d come to the holosuite, I’m just heading there now and I’ve got a new programme.”

“Tomorrow evening?” Julian suggested. “I have it booked a twenty-two hundred but I can’t decide where to go.”

“Sounds good,” Miles grinned. “Oh, you’ll need this.” He pushed one of the two boxes he was carrying at Julian’s chest.

“My new costume?” Julian asked, grinning. “Thanks.”

 

*

 

The outfit was… perhaps just slightly more likely to blend into Quark’s than some of their other holosuite costumes. Grey trousers, tall brown leather boots and some kind of brown leather jacket with a fleur-de-lys on the shoulder and which was belted at the waist. All of it looked scuffed and worn, but none of it as much as the off-white shirt, stained grey and ripped in several places. Julian couldn’t guess at what the programme would be.

He took one last look at himself in the mirror before heading off to the holosuite.

Miles was already inside, Quark told him when he got to the bar, so he headed upstairs and into holosuite three.

He was standing in some kind of courtyard, surrounded by rickety-looking wooden buildings, the ground beneath him covered in hay. Two men similarly dressed to him, stood off to a corner, washing a horse.

“D’Artagnan!” A voice which sounded like Miles called, and Julian looked up to see his friend standing on the balcony of the row of buildings, holding a sword.

“I’m D’Artagnan?” Julian asked, “and you?”

“I’m Athos,” Miles told him, heading down the steps towards him. “And that’s Porthos.” He gestured to one of the men by the horse.

Porthos nodded at them.

“Who’s that?” Julian asked of the other man.

“That’s Aramis, and he’s a right flirt, be careful of him.” Miles laughed, and Aramis grinned at him.

“He’s the one Kira punched for trying to kiss her?” Julian asked.

“No, that was Lancelot.”

“Oh, and where’s he?” Julian asked.

“About five hundred years ago on the other side of the channel.”

“Channel? We’re in Britain?”

“No. Lancelot was in Britain, we’re in France. This is the year sixteen twenty-four, during the reign of King Louis XIII. We’re musketeers.”

“I see,” Julian said. “And what’s our role?”

“Really, Julian?” Miles asked a confused look on his face, “You haven’t heard of the Three Musketeers? Alexandre Dumas?”

“Oh!” Julian laughed as realisation dawned. “Vaguely.”

“Well, I’d better get you caught up then.”

*

“And our mission,” Miles concluded, “is to steal the evidence from the pirates, and prevent Spain declaring war on France.”

“Following this badly hand-drawn ‘map’?” Julian gestured to it, a few lines drawn on a piece of cloth barely constituted a map. “That’ll be a challenge.”

“We leave at dusk,” Miles told him. “It’s fine, I know the way anyway. The map is just part of the program.”

“That’s a relief.”

*

That night as the sun began to set, they loaded a small supply of food and water into bags and strapped them to the saddles of their horses and departed from the barracks, heading out of the palace courtyard and beyond the walled perimeter.

They rode for sever2al hours, and listened as Aramis and Porthos recounted tales of previous adventures the four friends had shared, and laughed along. Julian wondered if the two holograms would expect them to weigh in at some point, but they seemed content carrying the conversation. Perhaps they had been written that way.

It was dark by the time they reached the forest, where they would be hidden from the view of anyone travelling along the main track, and could set up camp for the night. They climbed down from the horses backs’, tethering them to the trunks of some of the trees and retrieving some food from the bags, as well as a sack of hay for the horses to eat. Miles and Porthos set off to gather wood for a fire, and Aramis built a fireplace. Julian took the pots from a bag and began to set up a makeshift stove.

After dinner, they trained. Because funnily enough, Julian had never fought with a sword before. Oh, he knew how to successfully dodge a bat’leth, and was trained in basic hand-to-hand combat, but that was very different from battling against a horde of seventeenth century pirates and mercenaries. A real musketeer would have questioned why Miles had chosen the first night of their mission to teach Julian the art of sword-fighting, or indeed why Julian was not already skilled in it, but as it were the holographic Porthos and Aramis were quite happy to lend a hand.

Later, Julian and Miles recounted some of their missions on the Defiant, of their interactions with alien races, and Porthos and Aramis took it as some kind of new fantasy genre.

“And then,” Miles continued. “In our tiny little ten-centimetre runabout, we flew in through the ship’s aft plasma vent.”

“That must have been terrifying, Athos!” Aramis said, hanging on to Miles’ every word.

“Yeah, it was. They nearly vaporised us when they started the impulse engines.”

“What happened then?” Porthos asked.

“We discovered the ship had been commandeered by a species called the Jem-Hadar.” Julian told them “They were making our crew fix the warp engines to take it back to their territory. Tiny little us were able to beam into the optronic circuitry and reroute the decryption mechanism manually, returning control of the ship to our crew.”

“I didn’t understand a word of that entire story,” Aramis admitted, eventually leaning back. “but it’s an honourable tale.” They all laughed.

“Sssh,” Julian held up his hand. “I can hear something.” They all quieted, and the sound of footsteps crunching on fallen leaves could be heard ahead of them. They all got up, reaching for their weapons.

“Careful Julian,” Miles whispered, “those muskets don’t have a stun setting.”

Fortunately, the men who emerged out of the treeline were carrying sword, giving them a fighting chance, and Julian got to put his new skills to use. Unfortunately, they noticed too late the assailants who approached from behind and knocked them out.

They woke up in a small room that may have been a cellar or basement, and upstairs the raucous sounds of a pub; perhaps the very one they had been headed for. Their hands were tied together with ropes – a crude method, and digging into the skin of their wrists.

“Oh, great,” Porthos sighed loudly, and a man stuck his head around the door, then disappeared and they heard him shouting to someone that the prisoners were awake, before came into the room, a musket in his hands, followed by two others.

“Where are the letters?” A man demanded, and he spoke with a Spanish accent.

“What letters?” Porthos asked innocently, and was treated to a blow across the face.

“The letters Cardinal Richelieu wrote to Jacques Lémieux,” the man said. “One of our soldiers intercepted them, _you_ stole them from him.” He hissed. He was an ill-tempered man, already turning red in the face.

“We have no idea what you’re talking about,” Miles insisted. These were in fact the letters they’d been sent to retrieve: they contained accusations, incriminating King Louis of having spies in the Spanish court, men who intended to assassinate King Phillip.

“Escárcega,” one of his associates said, a warning tone. Julian assumed that was the man’s name. “Let them sit on it for a while.”

Escárcega stood glaring at the Musketeers for a moment, eventually backing slowly away, and the three men left the room.

“What are we going to do now?” Julian asked.

“I say we find a way out of here,” Aramis suggested.

“A good plan,” Miles agreed.

“If only we had one of those transporter devices of yours,” Aramis said.

“Now is not the time for humour,” Porthos scolded.

“If we can find something sharp we may be able to cut through these ropes.” Miles offered.

“It seems unlikely our captors would leave any such object lying around for us to get our hands on,” Julian pointed out. “Perhaps we should try and escape instead.”

“With our hands tied behind our backs?” Aramis was incredulous.

“We’ve been in worse.”

“Alright.”

The four of them managed to get to their feet and went to stand behind the door. It was an age-old tactic, but it was worth a try. They all cried for help, and soon a guard pushed opened the door. As soon as he was in the room, Porthos lunged forward, knocking him with his weight so the guard fell to the floor, and they all dashed out into a long corridor. They managed to get about half way along it before another guard cornered them, having appeared in the only other doorway, which presumably led to the way out, and was pointing a sword.

“Get back in there!” he demanded, waving the sword around. “We’re not finished with you yet.”

They outnumbered him four to one, but they didn’t know how many others may be around the corner. With a nod to each other, they reluctantly started walking back to the room where they’d been held. It had been a longshot anyway. But before they got there, they heard a gunshot ring out, and turned to see the man falling to the floor.

“Gentlemen,” said the woman, as she lowered the musket.

“Your majesty!” Aramis, Porthos and Miles all bowed low.

“Jadzia?” Julian hadn’t been expecting to see her here.

“It’s Anne, actually,” Dax curtsied, then pulled a knife from the fallen man’s pocket and cut the ropes from their hands. “Anne of Austria, here to save all your sorry arses.” She grinned.

“I don’t think the Queen would talk like that,” Miles said, laughing? “I hope you don’t mind, I invited Dax to join us. I was wondering when you’d show up.”

“Sorry, I was delayed in Ops. Time to get out of here?”

“The Queen?” Julian queried. “I’m surprised she would come on a mission like this, isn’t that what the Musketeers are here for?” then his mind caught up with the rest of what she’d said. “Wait, Austria?”

“Anne of Austria, yes. The Spanish Queen of France.” Miles explained. 

"Wow" Julian raised an eyebrow.

“I know. And yes, time to get out of here. Where are we?”

“Trader’s Tavern, by the port,” Dax told her.

“This is where we want to be,” Aramis said, having apparently recovered from the shock of being rescued by his Queen.

“According to our intelligence, the letters are kept in a locked box on the second floor,” Porthos added.

“So why do our captors think we have them, since they’re apparently based here?” Julian asked.

“I don’t know, but we’d better move.”


End file.
